The boys are back in town, with a new accompanist who gives their mild shenanigans an unexpected edge.

The boys are Bill Irwin and David Shiner, the veteran clowns who have been proving for years that it is possible to do quite a lot with almost nothing. Their (almost always) wordless routines mixing slapstick and pathos worked beautifully on Broadway in the 1990s in “Fool Moon” and Off Broadway in “Old Hats” in 2013. Now they have brought “Old Hats” back to the Pershing Square Signature Center, looking much the same but sounding quite different.

That’s because the show is really a three-legged stool, the two clowns and a musician, and this time around that musician is Shaina Taub. In between sketches by Mr. Irwin and Mr. Shiner, she performs original songs with a versatile band, a counterpoint to the clowns’ silent bits.

In the show’s first trip to New York, this duty fell to Nellie McKay, a “bewitching pixie of a performer,” as Charles Isherwood called her in his review in The New York Times. Ms. Taub is a different sort of songstress, a bit brassier and quite a lot darker.

“Grief sleeps at my feet next to doubt,” she sings in one number. “Don’t have the heart to kick them out.”

The instrumentation is eclectic — reeds, washboard, accordion — and the effect is both melancholy and ominous, a sort of Kit Kat Club aura without the decadence. (This is family-friendly theater.)

And that makes the sketches by Mr. Irwin and Mr. Shiner, which are largely the same as before, resonate a little differently. In a political-debate routine, two buffoonish candidates pander shamelessly and hilariously. It’s more topical than ever, but it also carries a hint of lament, as if to say, “Is this the best we can do?”

Mr. Shiner’s sad-clown routine, “The Hobo,” is sadder than ever, and in general a Depression-era fatalism hangs over these decidedly 21st-century proceedings (which feature the adroit use of cellphone- and tablet-related gags).

“Hats off to everything that leaves a scar for reminding me who my friends are,” Ms. Taub sings in a number whose chorus proclaims, “Here’s to the chaos.”

And yet skilled clowns know that chaos and comedy are cousins. A delightful and manic audience-participation sketch recreating the filming of a movie western lifts everyone’s spirits before it’s time to go home.

Old Hats

NYT Critic's Pick

Pershing Square Signature Center

480 W 42nd St.

Midtown West

Category

Off Broadway, Comedy, Dance Play, Play

Credits

Created and performed by Bill Irwin and David Shiner; Music and lyrics by and featuring Shaina Taub; Directed by Tina Landau